Your love is everything...

This is a song that we've sung a couple of times at KCC while I've been there. Had heard it before, but for me this, along with some of the other worship songs that we've used which vary in style and content, is reflective of where I'm at just now and able to help me give verbal expression to some of the things going on. Many people have a version of it, including Jesus Culture, but think it was originally written by a guy called Chris McClarney.

Your Love Is Everything

When I am dry and thirsty Lord,

And I'm crying out for more,

I know I can trust in your love.

In the darkness in the night

When I'm starving for the light

I know I can trust in Your love

You keep no records of my sin,

and you don't remember all my shame.

Your love heals every disease

Your love fulfills my every need

Your love is everything to me

Your love is everything

I will not forget

I wont forget your promises

I will not forget

I wont forget your love.

I will not forget

I wont forget nothing is impossible

I will not forget

I wont forget your love.

Reflections on my time at Hand of Friendship

This is quite an honest and frank post, but about stuff thats been on my mind this week. Because of that I hope that those reading are able to read it recognising the honesty and vulnerability that is contained in it.

Have been doing some reflecting this week on the group Hand of Friendship that I have been going to while on placement, where everyone is welcome and has a place.

Being there has also forced me to face some of my own prejudice. Well, I’m not sure prejudice is the right word, perhaps fears and misconceptions would be better. While I totally believe in diversity within the community of faith, that the church should be a place where all people are accepted, in reality that often means I spent time with people who are ‘like me.’ Or pretty much like me. The church I am in normally, and many of the churches I have worked in or visited, do not have many people with special needs in them. I'm actually not to sure I like this, as it makes me question what it says about us and this is deeply challenging. Personally this means that, unconsciously almost, I had developed a fear of sorts. In all honesty I was not sure how to respond to people with special needs, not always sure of how to communicate, and while never being faced with oppertunities of this sort it went unaddressed ... not something I am too proud to admit really, not my greatest confession thats for sure. Until I came to KCC.

The first night I was so nervous but the first couple of girls in put me at ease, mainly because they just wanted to chat about ‘normal’ things like music and Christmas. As more and more people came in I realised that actually it’s not as hard as I thought to communicate in situations like this. It simply requires me to be me, allow others to be them, and to view each person as an individual of value. Thinking about that it seems so simple and I can’t understand why I didn’t get it before, but I’m glad I do now.

Though I may not agree with his choice of terminology in his book, I understand what Stanley Hauerwas means when he writes this about how folks different to us give us insights into how community can be enhanced and enriched as they
force us to recognize that we are involved in a community life that is richer than out official explanations and theories give us the skill to say. (p.g 213)
He goes on to talk about the richness that people with special needs bring to community rather than just being those that are seen to take from community or have nothing to input. That has been my experience through Hand of Friendship.

Through Hand of Friendship I am learning to value people, seeing through God's eyes and in the process I am discovering more about who I am. God is a creative God, present in the most unexpected places, and I am finding God in the faces and people at Hand of Friendship – through the clients, the helpers and the carers. 'The other' (the term banded about a lot at the moment to describe anyone not me) is not someone to be feared but embraced, valued and loved in the same way I love self and God.

There are not any verses as far as I can see specifically about people with learning difficulties or God’s thoughts on this. (If I'm wrong please hightlight them to me!) However, there are many about how much God loves the people whom God created, how Jesus died for all, about how Jesus is for all, and how all can be in relationship with God. People with special needs or learning difficulties may understand things differently, at times more profoundly I sometimes think (though in truth don't we all understand things differently to one another eh!), but they are most definitely included in that ‘all’ rather than excluded. For me, and the Christian community at large, to view them differently than that, or as less than being included in that all, denies both their personhood, God’s creation and God’s plans and purposes. This is quite a sobering thought, when confronted with my unconscious prejudice and fear.

Moving towards this understanding is deeper than simply a warm, fuzzy feeling, but a growing sense of the love God has for all people. The more that moves me, the more I am moved to be and share with people. This I think is what it means for some of my theories and theological ideas about community engagement, involvement and the faith community in general to have flesh put on the bones. It is no longer simply ideas but actions.
If we are to be a good community we must be one that has convictions substantive enough not to fear our differences and, indeed, to see that we would not be whole without the other being different than us. (p.g. 214)
As I learn to communicate in new ways, in new situations, I am also learning what it takes to develop and maintain community, good community. Community embracing diversity but still held in unity.

Intelligent Church and incarnational ministry

Am on my final college placement at the moment, choosing to go to Kilsyth Community Church. As a Baptist College student the choice of a non-Baptist church may seem strange, but its not a chance choice. The Associate Pastor has been a college colleague for a few years, and having heard loads about the church I was keen to go there and check it out. Have become somewhat interested in thinking, reflecting on and living out certain 'anabaptist' principles in an attempt to follow after Christ with integrity, authenticity and well, radical-ness. By radical though I mean total surrender, utter life-long and whole-life discipleship. This church in many ways lives this out. And so while not Baptist they certainly live out baptist ideals in many aspects of church life and witness. So my placement is working alongside their Community Outreach Co-ordinator exploring how they might develop some of the community engagement into fresh expressions of church amongst other things. As part of that my personal reading, reflecting and writing will look at some of the values and principles that underpin community engagement.

With that in mind I have been reading Intelligent Church this week, reflecting on what it means to be the Church. Radical church, which really shouldn’t be that radical, but often is because it looks quite different to what church can often look like, is incarnational in nature. It seems to me that there is amongst some church leaders, and congregations too, a move towards this kind of church, springing from a discontent at the way things are currently. In my thinking this week I have been unable to get away from the idea that actually intelligent church is radical in nature and perhaps the biggest principle that underpins this is that it is incarnational.

If God is incarnational, and the church’s task is to be part of God’s mission, this principle must become ours too. (Chalke, pg 39).

Incarnational in the sense that we get involved. God, in Jesus, took on human flesh and became part of humanity. God got involved in a very real sense in everyday life. God did it in such a way that everything was turned on its head and transformed. Everything in the Bible points to and leads towards Jesus, and everything after talks of the implications. And so if we are, as disciples (those who know what their teacher knows and do what their teacher does as they follow after the teacher), are to become incarnational it means we must involved. Get involved in a real way, in the nitty gritty of people’s lives, of the communities and places we find ourselves. It’s not a maybe, but a definite.

Sounds great in theory, but how do we do this? How does this become concrete?
Perhaps the greatest miracle of Pentecost is this: God chooses to speak to us in our own language. His is no one-size-fits-all policy. He comes to us. He begins where we are.
If the incarnation is God personally involving himself with his people, the day of Pentecost is God miraculously equipping the church to do the same. The rest of the book of Acts is the story of how the first Christians connected with the world, slowly discovering how to contextualize the gospel for each people group they encountered – to meet them on their own turf.
This same task remains the challenge for the church today: to start where people are, to engage in our communities, to embrace the public – in short, to speak their language. (Chalke, pg. 41)

It takes concrete form in the practices we live out. These practices of things like inclusion, loyalty, service become the principles that underpin both community engagement as well as authentic Christian witness. This happens with the realisation that, like the chapter titles of Chalke’s book point to, church needs to become inclusive meaning it may look quite messy. People’s lives aren’t sorted, and neither are ours, and so inclusion and messiness are natural and to be expected rather than feared. This is what happens when you begin to discern what the living Christ is saying and doing amongst people, for Jesus loved and included and cleaned up people. We do the same, but not from a position of condemnation and superiority, but rather radical attachment to Jesus and love of God, self and other. Tripolar spirituality as David Augsburger would call it.

I have seen this borne out in many of the different things I have seen this week at KCC. They tried to convince me that every week is not as hectic as this one has been, but I'm beginning to see that actually it is. And rather than being off putting I actually think that is quite attractive. It is not an easy kind of ministry, but it is transformational. The thing is though, it most definately requires getting out of the mind-set that this is a quick-fix kind of ministry, or one in which you see 'bums on seats' quickly. You don't! But you do genuinely walk with people, witness to Jesus and eventually as they begin to become open to Jesus (in part because of the way Jesus has been borne witness to by disciples) transformation of a deep and lasting kind begins to occur. It takes time and it takes a willingness to endure the pain and frustration of what incarnational ministry often means, but it also means being open to seeing God move in the most amazing and unexpected ways.

Hmmm, I love it! Just the idea makes me come alive, and so I'm forced to ask myself why. Is it because that kind of ministry meets any kind of need in me? Not that I can see, but perhaps because it seems to reflect tripolar living - genuine authentic discipleship following after Jesus, Lord of all.